Top Ten Tips To Trek The (T)Alps (+ observations on Fundamental Laws of Alpine Physics)

10. Buy a French dictionary

Actually, buy an English dictionary in French. Then spend hours on the trail rehearsing how to say helpful sentences like “I would like to see a green elephant!” [Je voudrais voir un éléphant vert] so that when you finally arrive at the refuge1 an hour after the dinner has already been served and the kitchen is closed, you can accidentally order an CHF8 bottle of water. 

Wine and anglais as the sun sets in Chalet Alpin du Tour

9. Beware of wildlife

Bouquetin (the ibex with massive pointy horns) are harmless and photogenic.

The 'money shot' in another moraine basin

But pointing a camera at a herd of Swiss cows looming from the mist will result in a potentially lethal, musical2 stampede.

Misty, musical mountain top

8. Carry a pocket knife

They are perfect for slicing cheese and tomatoes to place on baguettes and for creating opportunities to interact with local airport security people.

Confiscating our weapon

 

7. Learn signage conventions in advance

For example, a Blue Sign represents alpine routes:




And no matter how direct a Blue Sign route may look, it should not be considered a shortcut. In fact, they should be considered Definitely-Do-Not-Follow-Me-In-Trainers3 cuts.

Following the blue sign to our doom

Signage in the alps is also prevalent and provides, rather than distance, estimated times to locations4.

Katie made several arts with her iPhone. This is my favourite.

6. Mountain refuges are the best things since sliced bread

Try to spend as many nights in them as possible. Refuges vary widely in quality, remoteness and (the most important factor) quaintness. It's definitely worth looking at reviews in advance (e.g. https://goo.gl/fDuK0H), to separate the sourdough from stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth thin white bread.

In general, the more remote the refuge, the more stunning the views, but the lower quality fayre and conditions.That said, there are also relatively newly built refuges e.g. Cabane de Moiry that offer the best of both worlds. A final word of warning: try not to be late for the set, sit-down dinner without warning in advance: the wrath of a Swiss refuge guardian is quite something.

Prafleuri. The one place you do not want to be late to.

5. Bring toothpaste

Do not expect to get away with mooching toothpaste from other refuge guests. They treasure it dearly. Instead expect to lug it around with you. Ideally, organise a bet for who can use the least floss in the two months leading up to the trip, where the loser has to lug all the toiletries5.

4. Arrange evening entertainment

For example, involve other refuge guests in a good old-fashioned British Pub Quiz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pub_quiz) each night. Ideally ensure that your competitors are not from the UK for near certainty of victory. Finally, invent an intricate set of rules that you can argue about for most of the trip and confuse the other players with.

3. Protect your skin

It gets hot, and the sun is strong. Appoint a Director of Lathering for your trekking party with sole responsibility for ensuring the correct application of sunscreen.  Then make sure she remembers to cover herself as well. Finally, avoid environmentally friendly sunscreen. (See Mother Nature’s Law of Bio Sunscreen below.)

The Director of Lathering, suffering under the strain of her responsibilities

2. This isn’t the Rockies

You are rarely more than 10 or 15 kilometers from the nearest village or refuge, and even less from the nearest fresh Alpine glacier stream. No need to pack food and water reserves. Save precious granola bars for truly critical crises -- like the waiting period between boarding the plane and when the flight attendants bring out the snack trolley.

1. Travel light

Any slight discomfort resulting from wet shoes, smelly t-shirts or socks stiff enough to salute the Queen is massively overshadowed by the swelling pride induced by jaw-dropping admiration of fellow hikers who exclaim: “Is that all you’re carrying!??” Not to mention the ability to jog on the flat sections of the trail. (Read: hiking boots, ice picks, and super warm clothes are not necessary.)

It is not cold at all. Honest.

Fundamental Laws of Physics

Iain’s First Law of Rucksack Entropy

As the trip goes on, despite most likely carrying less (due to e.g. disposal of toxic socks) it becomes harder and harder to fit your possessions in rucksack.

Katie’s Law of Cheese Maturity

Each day of sock wear enables your sock to mimic the smell of a more and more mature alpine cheese.

Lac Champex Law of Floating

The harder a beginner swimmer attempts to "just relax!" to 'float’ the more likely they are to sink.

Swiss Law of Refuge Prices

The further into Switzerland one penetrates, the more expensive a night in a refuge is.

Mother Nature’s Law of Bio Sunscreen

The more environmentally friendly the sunscreen, the more difficult it is to rub into skin.

The Dirty Details

Finally, we should probably detail some of our route, right? We trekked (some of) the 'Walkers' Haute Route', which starts in France, in Chamonix, in the shadow of Mont Blanc, and finishes in Zermatt, Switzerland some 112 miles later, in the shadow of the Matterhorn. There is an excellent guidebook, written by the mysterious, enigmatic, and seldom wrong Kev Reynolds: https://goo.gl/71wny8

It runs alongside the far more famous Tour de Mont Blanc (TMB) for the first day or two, but then quickly diverges to head east into Switzerland. It gets more remote than the TMB, and goes higher. We can't recommend the route and the general experience highly enough. We only managed two thirds of the route (see below) due to a wedding commitment (and Iain's lack of vacation days), and I'm sure we'll finish it some day. 

Finally, here is our itinerary as it panned out, which was almost exactly as we had planned it In km and metres, since it was in Europe): 

Day 1: 14k, 400m+: Chamonix > Le Tour

Day 2: 20k, 1800m+, 1800m-: Le Tour > Col de Balme > Champex > (hitchhike)> Le Chable

Day 3: 23k, 2400m+, 800m-: Le Chable>Mont Fort>Cabane Praflueri

Day 4: 30k, 2500m+, 2000m-: Cabane Praflueri>Arolla>(hitchhike)> Le Sage> Cabane de Moiry

Day 5: 15k, 700m+, 1400m-: Cabane de Moiry > Zinal> (hitchhike)> Chandolin > Cabane Ill Horne

Total Distance: 102km
Total Elevation Change: 7800m ascent; 6000m descent


Footnotes

1. Variously called hüttes, cabanes, or rifugis depending on the country/area. Being in France and French-speaking parts of Switzerland, we primarily encountered Refuge de X and Cabane Y’s.

2. A beautiful and distinctive feature of alpine pastures is the ringing of cowbells. Each of these deadly ruminants carries a large bell around its neck to help farmers track ‘em down, which, as a corollary, provides an atmospheric musical accompaniment to your impending doom.

3. British to American Translation Guide: Trainers = Tennis Shoes/normal running shoes.

4. One of the more important tasks on your first day or two of walking is to calculate the Fitter-Than-The-Average-Bear factor to work out how long it will actually take you. We found that it took around ⅔ the advertised time for predominantly uphill sections and around ½ the time for downhill sections when we were getting hungry and decided to run.

5. Okay this may be a niche tip, but we promise the rest are moderately sensible.

Mt. Conness, the photo diary

What can you say about a trip that goes, all in all, quite smoothly?  Not that much-- the stories aren't even funny.  C-dawg and I went to Yosemite, scrambled around, and then had a lovely day climbing Mt. Conness, who's a really nice big old man.  Enjoy the pictures. FWIW, you can scramble up Conness without a rope, too, so if it has any appeal to those without all the gear let me know-- I'd go visit again!

On Saturday we scrambled around, drank canned wine, and swam in Tenaya Lake

To bolster my strength I ordered some meatloaf
that I completely failed to finish! 

We got on the trail before dawn (of course)

CR in the dawn alpenglow

The approach was quite a long and lovely hike, and included some blessed cairns, a snowfield, and some scrambling

After hiking/scrambling up quite a while you get to this crazy moonscape summit plateau.
From here you can hike to the summit, but that was not what we did!

Here's the summit from the plateau-- close enough to touch!

Instead we went down 1000ft from the summit plateau to the bottom
of the west ridge on the left side of this picture

Luckily the hike down was beautiful

Then we started climbing the ridge!

The ridge was very long!  The first few pitches were a little tough
but then it mellowed out, mostly, and we just enjoyed the views.

Seriously, the ridge just went on and on

You got some cool perspectives as we got higher up
and it turned into a scramble.

These adorable button buckwheat graced the cracks

We spotted some guys free climbing the north ridge,
and they conveniently caught us on the summit so we
didn't have to take selfies.

Mt. Lyell is visible in the distance--
it's the peak with the largest snow field.

Good times at the top-- for once the sky was clear, the summit was flat, and it was fairly early in the day, so we got to hang out for a little bit!

While we enjoyed a snack this furtive furry marmot was sneaking up on me.

Cool glacial lakes below the summit

Accurate "climbing action shot"

Bye-bye, Mr. Mt. Conness!

Lines on Lyell

main text by fdk (with miscellaneous parentheses by a fellow wcac member)

Suddenly there’s the distinctive clatter of a man (spectacularly) surfing schist* and I look up and decide to dodge left toward the 1000ft drop off because it seems like Iain and his rock wave are drifting to my right.  Iain jumps off his schist wave with the elegance of an Olympic gymnast’s dismount (by sheer chance avoids falling on face), we both take a moment to swear loudly, and then we keep ascending this pile of schist shit known as Mt. Maclure.  About five minutes later we’re stopped for our 7th snack break ¾ of the way up Maclure, and I’m trying to figure out how to convince Johnny that we do not need to finish climbing this mountain.

Johnny (Iain to his mother) seems to be a pretty easily convinced that a bad idea that will occur in the mountains is actually a good idea (the only difference between an ordeal and an adventure is attitude; so say the boy scouts). After we had gone on approximately 2 runs together (it was halfway through our first run) I floated the idea of a long run in Yosemite.  Instead of politely refusing like a normal human Iain said, “Sure, what’s the longest, nuttiest one you would consider?”  So we ended up planning a weekend outing to run the Roof of Yosemite (ROY) loop (“the highest peak in Yosemite, you say, I’m in!”), a 30 mile loop designed by my hero Leor Pantilat that includes ~10 miles off trail and three pretty decent scrambles to summits (Lyell, Maclure, and Florence).  This will prove to be a bit much.

https://pantilat.wordpress.com/2014/07/29/the-roof-of-yosemite-loop/

(Leor makes this sound nearly trivial…)

We headed out to Yosemite (very) early on Saturday, and after eating a burger (and tea and ice cream) at the Tuolumne Grill we headed out for a warm-up jog on the Mono Lake trail (trailhead 9700ft) to check out the snow conditions.  While lacing up my shoes the familiar elevation heart-gargling began, but I’m starting to expect it, so we headed down the trail.  Mono Pass trail is quite a cute meander through alpine meadow leading out to a pass in the shadow of Mt. Lewis,

Mt. Lewis at Mono Pass

and we found it almost completely snowless.  Johnny seemed oddly perturbed (utterly miserable, where the hell is all the oxygen?!) on this run, but I didn’t think much of it. When we reached the pass we pulled out the map, and I was forced to confess that I didn’t really understand how to use a compass and map (ruh-roh, we’re gonna be relying on me?!!).  Johnny patiently explained the process approximately 10 times (once) while mosquitos nibbled at our copious exposed skin, and I think I might have gotten it!  Except for declination… (grid to mag: add, mag to grid: get rid; wait, that’s in the UK, is it the same here…?) This boded well for 10 miles of off-trail travel.

As we were headed to the east side a big thunderstorm rolled through, complete with hail,

Stormy east side

and we decided to have First Dinner at the highly lauded Lee Vining Mobil instead of eating potato soup in the rain.  The fish tacos really are amazing (the veggie chilli was pretty good too).  We then wandered around the Mono Lake tufas (big ol’ pillars of calcium carbonate formed underwater and now exposed due to LA stealing all the water), and I considered how I could leave a state with such great fish tacos while Johnny considered Second Dinner prospects (not forgetting supper, and pre-bedtime tea).

Stormy Tufas

At the Tufas

OMG, delicious multi-berry pie.  Taking food pictures at the Tioga Pass Resort = touron moment

When I mentioned the pie at the Tioga Pass Resort he was sold (‘Murica!). We enjoyed a pleasant hangout writing out a poem to leave in the Mt. Lyell summit register and finally solving the meta puzzle (adaptablity = pliancy; best picture winning movie: the King’s Speech).  

Then it was back to Camp 9, and the great gear figuring ceremony.   

Gear sort. Note the stove and pot--
we needed to make yet more tea?

After much discussion and weather forecast considering (with Greg G’s voice in my head the whole time) we (Feliché) decided to try to get up at 3AM (though she didn’t hear her alarm and I had to do the waking) and on the trail by 4AM.  So we scampered off to bed. It was another night of beautiful stars.

We woke up, (I faffed), broke camp, (faffed some more), made tea, (ate the remains of Felice’s delicious, and traditional irish soda bread), and then started to drive out just after 3:30.  Camp 9 is an unofficial camp spot, and many sites can be accessed by driving between a pair of big boulders, which looks like a tight squeeze.  We had driven through Saturday night, but when we went to drive out Sunday morning  there was a car and a sleeping person positioned right between our exit boulders.  Luckily the driver and the sleeper were from the same party and were good-natured about getting out of our way (director of public relations, Iain, was sent to smooth the situation).  Idiots.

Starting selfie. Here we go!

We started running from Tioga Meadows down the JMT in complete and utter darkness at 4:30 (Iain regretting his $10 children’s headtorch), focusing very hard on not getting lost or falling on our faces.  

In spite of all precaution, and in classic fdk fashion, shortly after it had started to get light I tripped and fell pretty hard.  I scraped up my right thigh, right elbow, and right hand (blood everywhere). One of my bottles started leaking all over me and I had to try and find it.

Note the bloody right thigh

During this whole lovely trip up the canyon I never really settled into a groove—I think my pack was too heavy to really feel good running (ditto). I started with 1.75L of water, which was pretty dumb since we were running next to a stunningly clear river for the first 11 miles.

Someone drank straight out of this stream...

Johnny running down the JMT

After that first 11 miles of running we veered right, away from the JMT, and headed up a wide valley towards Mt. Lyell.  Shortly after leaving the trail we began to hit snow, and put on microspikes (thanks, CR!).  The snow was mostly hard enough to walk on, but when we hit a stretch with boulders or water beneath the snow we would post-hole through.  Even over relatively flat ground this was slow going, but as we approached the wide slope leading up to the col between Lyell and Maclure it got increasingly steep and became very slow going. This part really reminded me of going up Avalanche Gulch on Shasta, and I moved into the pain cave, focused only on slowly moving up, while Johnny casually danced (trudged disheartedly, cursing my frugality in not buying sunglasses in all this snow) up above me on icy steep snow.  This kind of steady labor is usually my sauce, but the groove still proved elusive, and it took some serious mental work to get up that slope.

Makin' it and doin' it.

Johnny cruising upwards at ~12,000 ft

After quite a long time I was relieved to gain the notch between Lyell and Maclure.  It had taken us about 5.5 hours to get there, when we thought it would take about 3.5. After an extended snack break we started trying to find our way up Mt. Lyell, which was said to be a class 3/4 scramble, and I realized that I should have paid a little more attention to the trip reports where they describe actually ascending the peak. (also guilty)

Mt. Lyell above the snowfield/glacier (I think)

Long snow slope slog up to the notch

Somehow the summits had seemed incidental to the route when I was preparing!  We started up one long fissure, and got into a debate about what class 3/4 really means—could this be right? because I would have preferred a rope if this is really the right way! It wasn’t. After a few false starts we found a plausible line up the blocky rocks, and even saw a cairn, and ascended by first veering north around a small point, then heading up some granite ramps to a false summit (some really lovely scrambling), then climbing up the ridge to the true summit.  The vertical climb up to the first false summit was the only tricky bit, but I’m a total weenie, and I wasn’t too sketched out. It is worth noting that the mountain is very high, and drops off precipitously on the south side. So there’s some exposure all around.  As was true for every other segment of the journey, Johnny got ahead of me on the climb, and had to wait up a couple of times, but I am not a very fast climber.

The summit of Lyell was (really very) lovely—great views, not too windy and cold, a very cute summit block, and an interesting register.  We really had only one job for the day, and completed it, but I’ll let Johnny tell you about that. (depositing part of a wedding present [a poem, two toy dinosaurs and a voucher for ice-cream and a milkshake] from KW and I to some friends [who live in the UK] in the summit register box;  it’s a long story...)  

Summit pano

Very pleased to be at the top of Yosemite

This is actually one of the pictures with Johnny's eyes more open

The mysterious deposit in the register

More summit views

I just couldn't get over these cute blue lakes.

Looking back down the valley

4000 meter peaks have some cache, apparently.
But we're just short.

Going down was actually a lot easier than going up, even though I had to ask Johnny for occasional assistance on the down climb.  “Hey, your dead weight is back here and needs a little help!” We made it back down to the notch and, headed up Maclure on the other side.  

Beginning the sketchy trudge up Maclure.

Mt. Maclure is Mt. Lyell’s evil little brother.  Since Lyell is a little taller he’s gotten all the attention over the millennia, and it’s made Maclure bitter and fractious (a very apt word).  Maclure is a little whiner, just a gravity-defying pile of rocks that seem to be held together by nothing at all.  You head up a long shoulder/edge that drops off sharply on the south side, and the climbing is completely non-technical, but this mountain bothered me a lot more than Lyell.  When I was in high school I had a close call involved sliding on a big pile of scree towards a sharp edge, and I’ve hated scree ever since (I happen to love it when it’s a bit closer to sea-level).  But the only way to continue on the ROY was to summit Maclure and head down the ridgeline on the other side.  And then Johnny was surfing (falling) towards me, and I began to wonder if our plans might be changing.  

Thinking things over on Mt. Maclure

After consulting, and realizing that we’d already been out for 7 hours, we decided that we were not going to pull off the ROY loop (in daylight without it becoming an ‘ordeal’) today.  Once that decision was made (phew!) it seemed a lot less important to get to the top of flaky Mt. Maclure, and we started slip-sliding our way back down.  At one point I kicked a 10x10x4 inch rock at Johnny, but he was able to dodge it pretty well.  I don’t like Mt. Maclure!  But the ROY still intrigues me, so I’ll probably be back (yup, we will).  Maybe there’s some technique to climbing up loose rock? (surfing?)

Glissading should be done in pants

The way down the glacier was a lot more fun—I was able to glissade a couple good stretches (very entertaining to watch and photograph), and I think glissading in running shorts was how I gave myself a large raspberry on my left thigh/cheek.  

Running back down the JMT was a bit dispiriting (hell), even though I felt ok (I did not), because we didn’t think we’d see this stretch of trail again so soon, but getting into the lovely Tuolumne a couple of times helped a lot (a tiny bit).  About 4 miles down the trail I stopped for my first swim and realized that I didn’t have my phone, which I was carrying for pictures (classic Felice).  

The spot where I figured out that I didn't have my phone

Going back up that trail was the last thing we wanted to do, but I thought I might have dropped it when we stopped for water a mile (and a half) back, so we started walk/jogging back up the JMT.  Luckily the first hikers we passed said that another hiker headed towards Tuolumne had picked up a phone, and we were able to chase him down (a slow-motion, high-altitude, tired-runner chase) and avert an expensive add-on to the trip.  I’m really great at adulthood (better than the guy who forgets, when putting on sunscreen, that the sun can also shine from behind him).  But, here’s the thing, a day out is a good day, and as we closed in on the car I think we were both pretty happy campers (I suppose I could grudgingly admit that the last few miles were pretty fun). I’m really glad Johnny put up with my ineptitude and laggardly ways on this journey (and Felice put up with my many tea stops during the weekend; constant eating; grumbling about altitude, snow-eye headaches and, the unfairness of the change in plans on our ‘how many hikers will we see in the day’ bet. [I lost]).  

I think we did tire Johnny out (at least a little)

I mean, we made it onto the roof, we just didn’t spend as much time there as we expected!  Also, Leor is a badass.  That is all.

*Is Maclure actually made of schist?  (No, but I really like the pun, so screw facts [British politicians don’t care for them; current affairs joke]) My lack of basic geology knowledge has made it difficult to determine definitively, but it is irrelevant for the purposes of this story.